LAS VEGAS – Laura Myers, a veteran Associated Press reporter and editor who led the news cooperative's coverage of foreign affairs as the country reeled from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has died.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Friday that Laura A. Myers had died of cancer.

The 53-year-old Las Vegas native was the AP's political editor during the 2000 presidential election and later led an international investigative reporting effort focused on global terrorism following the Sept. 11 attacks.

Myers spent more than 17 years on and off with the AP starting in 1987 in the agency's Reno bureau. She later worked in San Jose and San Francisco before working in the news service's Washington, D.C., bureau.

She took breaks from the AP to join the Peace Corps in West Africa and train journalists in Algeria. She spent the past five years covering politics for Nevada's largest newspaper.